Reply #51: That's a gross oversimplification.

[iconicgnom]

Fighting WHAT "outside the US"? Against whole peoples who haven't attacked the US? Or against bases set up for the purpose of training an army that has explicitly declared war on the US? What abut against *possible* bases *possibly* set up for the purpose of training an army that might *possibly* declare war on the US?

Once you go the preemptive route there's no stopping at any twitch of an overactive imagination, and you're at the mercy of people hell-bent on terrorizing you with tales of imaginary enemy actions. Every little word may be brought into play, into the escalating rhetoric of imaginary threats.

Haven't the citizens of the US figured that out, yet?

Is the fighting overseas, outside the US, that's going on now, contra REAL threats to the US, or is it contra insurgents fighting US and NATO armies of occupation?

Is there a point where a legitimate war action, e.g. a NATO action against al Qaeda camps in Tora Bora, becomes a totally illegitimate occupation? Does the US have the right to flat out enslave whole non-US populations in the interests of "preemptive self-defense"? Do US citizens figure that because they have an impressive military machine that no power on earth can stop, they have the right to determine to what extent this that and the other foreign nation should be enslaved to them? Is that the purpose of the ever escalating military spending of the US, even after the cold war ended?